Transgender Tot and School Toilets

Most of us are aware of the struggle of transgender people. Born a boy, the brain identifies female. Born a female, the brain identifies male. This is not a choice. It is a biological factthat has been measured by researchers. The specific experiment was in watching the brain’s reaction using an MRI to various visual stimuli. Transgender females’ brains responded very similarly to a biological female. The same was true of transgender males. This isn’t about, for instance, a girl saying to herself, “gee, I feel like being a boy from now on.” Most transgender people struggle emotionally and psychologicallywith their condition, beginning in early childhood. They suffer from clinical depression and anxiety when their family and friends try to suppress their feelings, or trivialize their feelings as merely a phase. Some transgender people commit suicide due to the repression of their true sex. Some of these people are quite young, in their teens and early 20’s.

No one teaches a child to be transgender. Very few people deliberately (and successfully) raises a boy as a girl or a girl as a boy. Why would any parent look at the child and decide “I wanted a boy so I will raise my girl as a boy.” In all honesty, a reader replied to one of my blogs and told me that her father raised her as a boy. She didn’t explain why but she certainly suffered from many psychological problems by the time she was able to leave home. This is the result of raising a child as the opposite gender. It doesn’t work.

I’ve detailed the John-Jane Case in an earlier blog. The case was that of David Reimer, a male who was raised unsuccessfully as a girl due to a tragic circumcision accident. A psychiatrist named John Money worked with Reimer and his family to convince Reimer that he was a she. Reimer was given female hormonesand dressed like a girl. In spite of these influences, Reimer suffered many consequences:

depression

confusion – he liked girls and worried that he was a ‘lesbian’

bullying by children at school

suicidal urges

When, at the age of 13,he became suicidal, his parents informed him of his real sex. This liberated Reimer for many years, but ultimately his experience led to his suicide at the age of 35. Skeptics believe that transgender is learned and not genetic. The David Reimer case contradicts this ignorance. What I’m leading up to for the past several paragraphs (you still with me?) is a recent case about a 6-year-old transgender female in kindergarten, Coy Mathis, from Colorado, who has been permitted to live as a girl by her parents. Throughout kindergarten at Eagleside Elementary School , Coy was permitted to use the girls’ washroom, but in grade 1, the school reversed its decision and told Coy’s parents the girl had to either use the boy’s bathroom, the nurse’s office bathroom, or the teacher’s bathroom. Naturally, Coy didn’t want to use the boys’ washroom. Can you imagine being a kid again and forced to use the toilet for the opposite sex? Eesh. Her parents immediately withdrew her from school and homeschooled her while they fought the decision through the Colorado Civil Rights Division. Their lawyers were from the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. Eventually, the matter was resolved in Coy’s favour.

Pre-school and kindergarten children often display extreme behaviors when parents and schools try to force them into the role of their biological sex. These children are known to:

self-mutilate (eg. bite themselves; scratch themselves until they bleed; pull out their hair)

throw temper tantrums when parents try to dress them according to their biological gender

act out when schoolteachers force them to identify with their biological gender: for example, one kindergarten transgender female became irate and threw a tantrum when a teacher tried to make her stand in a line-up for boys.

November 2012, a transgender teen boy from in Clarington, Ont. was told he couldn’t use the boys’ bathroom although half of the students at his high school signed a petition in his favour.

April 2013, a transgender teen girl from Nova Scotia faced suspension at her rural high school in Milford Station for using the girls’ bathroom.

The bathroom thing really gets me. What do the schools think the transgender kids are doing in there anyway? Medical examinations? As far as I can remember picutres of male and female genitalia are part of the human sexuality curriculum in both elementary and secondary schools. Who cares where you pee? Meh, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen em’ all.